HANOVER, N.H. — Republican presidential frontrunner Mitt Romney emerged unscathed yet again from a GOP presidential debate Tuesday in which contenders focused their attacks on the federal government they said is the source of the nation’s economic problems.
Buoyed by a major endorsement from New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie earlier in the day, Romney largely avoided confrontations and watched from the sidelines during the few dustups that punctuated a toned-down debate at Dartmouth College.
When Romney was eventually challenged on health care more than an hour into the debate — his biggest liability among conservative voters — he turned the topic against his questioner, Texas Gov. Rick Perry.
“We have less than 1 percent of our kids that are uninsured,” Romney, the former governor of Massachusetts, said.”You have a million kids uninsured in Texas — a million kids. … I care about people.”
Perry, relegated to the side of the debate stage thanks to dwindling poll numbers, was a non-factor for much of the night. Though he avoided the blunders that defined a string of recent poor debate performances, he also failed to land shots on frontrunner Romney or his new rival, former Godfather’s Pizza CEO Herman Cain.
Instead, Perry repeatedly returned to his proposals to cut government regulation and expand domestic oil and gas exploration — the chief means of fueling job growth in Texas — as the solutions for America’s economic problems.
Cain, a Georgia businessman and afterthought in most previous debates, surged into the field’s top tier since winning a Florida straw poll last month and in the debate focused on his controversial 9-9-9 tax plan. The plan would replace the current tax code with a 9 percent tax on corporate and individual income and a new 9 percent national sales tax. His opponents ripped into it as unworkable.
“We don’t need 9-9-9,” Perry said.
“I thought it was the price of a pizza,” quipped former Utah Gov. Jon Huntsman
“It isn’t a jobs plan,” Minnesota Rep. Michele Bachmann added. “It’s a tax plan.”
But the phrase 9-9-9 was easily the most debated of the night, a welcome development for a candidate now in the limelight and with much left to prove to a national audience.
The Bloomberg-Washington Post debate showcased the fluidity of a GOP primary contest in which debate performances have both crippled candidacies — Perry and former Minnesota Gov. Tim Pawlenty — and reignited others — Cain and Bachmann.
With Perry’s campaign seemingly in free fall, the Christie endorsement gave Romney greater momentum as he seeks to convince voters that he is the most electable candidate despite problems he has winning over conservative voters. Christie’s endorsement will carry favor with the many Republican fundraisers who so desperately pushed for Christie to enter the race in recent weeks.
Still, Romney stood behind positions during the debate sure to draw criticism from staunch conservatives.
In addition to praising his Bay State health care plan, which served as the basis for a national Democratic health care plan Republicans have pledged to repeal, Romney also defended the concept of bank bailouts decried by conservatives and liberals alike.
The debate’s focus on economic issues aided several candidates mainly by putting off limits some of the controversies each faces. For Romney, that meant not having to defend his Mormon faith, which has ignited concerns with evangelical Christian voters. And Perry didn’t have to defend his support for tuition breaks for illegal immigrants.
